Publicly traded Bitcoin mining company MARA saw its share price drop 3.4% on Monday, May 11, closing at $12.93. The drop followed the company’s first-quarter loss report.
However, the stock recovered somewhat in pre-market trading on Tuesday.
According to his income reportFirst-quarter revenue fell 18% to $176 million, and the net loss was $1.3 billion. The company said more than 90% of its net loss was due to the crypto crisis, adding:
The net loss during the quarter includes a loss of $1.0 billion related to the fair value of digital assets.
At the end of 2025, the company owned more than 53,000 BTC.
However, MARA reported that it held 35,303 BTC at the end of March.
During the same period, the BTC price fell from over $98,000 to a low $60,000, but ended the first quarter at around $68,000. That actually means a decrease of 30%.
Notably, MARA sold 20,880 BTC in the first quarter for an average of $70,137, or approximately $1.5 billion worth of BTC in the first quarter. From this, $1.1 billion in BTC sold was used to finance its debt, effectively reducing its total debt burden by 30%.
MARA uses Bitcoin holdings for AI pivot
That said, the miner is still moving forward with its aggressive AI pivot plans. In fact, part of the $1.1 billion BTC sell-off in the first quarter was for both debt reduction and AI pivot.
This reflected the broader trend of mining sell-offs in the first quarter. But MARA led the dump by selling 20,000 BTC from the market total 32K BTC discharged in the same period.
Robert Samuels, VP of Investor Relations at MARA, even reiterated that 90% of the company’s capacity will be converted into AI infrastructure.
This shift echoes MARA CEO Fred Thiel’s warning last year that BTC miners’ days are numbered. Thiel warned that after the BTC halving in 2028, small block rewards will force miners to become energy generators.
In 2028, you will either own, own, or partner with a power generator.
In other words, only miners with energy controls or AI infrastructure will survive after block rewards are reduced from the current 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC after 2028.
In fact, this is part of the strategic partnership with Starwood. The goal is to transform MARA’s existing BTC mining sites into AI data centers and power generators.
Final summary
- MARA’s stock price fell shortly after reporting an 18% decline in revenue and a net loss of $1.3 billion in the first quarter.
- The miner redeemed more than 20,000 BTC in the first quarter to reduce its debt and accelerate its AI pivot